2012-13 1_Macroscope

A daily existence within multiple and vast networks is now the norm. There continue to be, however, periodic moments of newness when these networks reveal ways of perceiving or knowing the world not previously considered. During a major event, for example, a social network like Twitter may produce a form of alternate map – a provisional reality of relational entities that co-exist with the other — geographical — reality. These are experiences that emerge from informal systems (or, rather, somewhat formal systems with informal participation.)

On the other extreme are highly controlled technologies developed with the specific purpose of recording the world a particular way. These are often produced for scientific or military or large commercial ventures. The term Big Science emerged in the 1970s to characterize these often billion-dollar-plus projects. With affordable technology (but also simply the transformed perceptual frameworks brought about by our everyday uses of these technologies) the prospect of devising (and, again, simply of conceiving) deliberate systems for large-scale recording becomes, for the first time, both realistic and potentially relevant for everyone. Citizen mapping. Small Science.

For the Macroscope inquiry students will be conceiving of and creating an informal (read: “inexpensive”) system for the capture of highly specific data at a relatively large and/or distributed scale. A “system” can be comprised of people or devices or…

Includes a visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to meet with Mars Rover drivers, data analysts, and data visualization scientists.

Featured Projects:

In talking to the scientists at JPL, we learned about the programmatic movement of the Mars Rover—how each mechanism is responsible for a specific task, how the data is collected, processed and interpreted. As a group, we wondered how we might approach our expedition as a kind of human-powered rover. By Walton Chiu, Greg Ahn, Divya Gaitonde, Shawn Jackson.

Calabasas Murmurs is an exploration into suburban space through field recording, transcription and algorithmic language processing. The Calabasas itinerary was determined by top results for common queries on Yelp. The printed scripts are a hypothetical toolkit for travel to Calabasas in order to pass, undetected, as community insiders.
By Sangwoo Han, Aaron Fooshee, Nancy Kwon, Gene Lee.

Alluvial Void: Tools for Imaginary Remote Sensing at the Periphery of Raider Crater is based on Irwindale, a city formed only 13 months after Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 into law. If you’ve ever driven in Southern California, you’ve been on a piece of Irwindale. By Ian Besler, Eric J. Battin, and Yoon Choi.

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Lab Inquiries

Each year the Lab track runs a set of five Inquiries— 2-5 week intensive projects built around a theme emerging from culture, technology or science. Inquiries begin with a question or a phenomenon and ask "what if"? Each inquiry engages external collaborators, project partners, and travel to locations or extraordinary situations. The projects that result take a variety of forms.